Drivers HP vs. Microsoft

[louey-3]

Our co. basically uses HP printers only. What I'd trying to figure out
is, our Print Servers are Win2k and Win2k3.

Whats the difference between Microsoft Drivers and HP Drivers as were
in the process of standardising our printer drivers. Microsoft seems to
use a Universial Drv (UNIDRVUI.dll) if it does have drivers for a
specific printer.

Is there actually any performance diff between HP/MS or is it better to
use the latest HP Drivers.

Thanks

Zeno

 

[Cari \(MS-MVP\)]

It's usually better to use the HP drivers if they are the latest.

 

[Chuck]

Usually, the HP MS printer drivers do not have all the printers features
enabled. The HP drivers usually have most of things like added paper trays
and specialized printing features available.

 

[Daniel Wyness]

Usually the HP are better - they have more features on the Properties page
of the printer and the print results tend to be better. But beware!

In a recent roll-out we found some HP drivers would not work properly unless
an admin user connected to the print server first to auto-install the
drivers from the print server. Not ideal when you have several hundred
users and PCs! We had to go back to an older version of the HP driver to
resolve this.

So my advice is use the HP drivers if you can. They are usually better but
test them first on a PC that has never connected to that type of printer
before (and therefore does not have the driver installed) with a non-admin
account and see if it works.

HP drivers - best for features/performance
MS drivers - less installation issues. Seem to be better tested

Hope that helps!